By Blake Colston
Sports Editor
After Austen Mueller finished off his 1-under-par 69 at Dornick Hills earlier this month during a qualifying event for the United States Junior Amateur Golf Championship, his fate remained uncertain. Confident but still anxious, he checked his phone as final results rolled in.
Finally, about an hour after he’d walked off the course, there was good news. The Yukon resident and Piedmont High School standout had placed second overall to earn one of four automatic bids from the Ardmore qualifier.
“I hugged my mom, but my brain didn’t really understand what was going on until the next day,” he said. “A year ago, I never would’ve thought I would have this chance, now I’m just really excited.”
“I’m just so proud. I’ve seen him work hard for so long,” added Katie Mueller, Austen’s mom.
Mueller said his game was in a good place headed into the qualifier.
“If the putter was rolling, I knew I had a chance,” he said.
His putter was indeed rolling. Mueller drilled a 15-footer for birdie at the Par-5 sixth hole and two-putted for another birdie at No. 14 after driving the green on the 280-yard Par 4.
Mueller tried to play “really conservative golf” – aiming to hit as many fairways and greens as possible – for the rest of the round. He made par on 15 of the 16 remaining holes, shaking off a bogey on No. 16 to finish under par on a course he’d never played before.
“I hit the ball amazingly,” he said. “The best I had hit it in the last couple weeks.”
Now, Mueller has about a month to prepare for one of the country’s most prestigious amateur golf events, played this year at Oakland Hills Country Club’s South Course in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., July 22-27.
“I’ve never been to Michigan, so that’ll be fun,” he said.
Mueller will play a practice round on the course prior to the tournament and also plans on watching video from the 2008 PGA Championship held at Oakland Hills to learn more about the intricacies of the course.
The championship begins with 264 players – Mueller is one of just three Oklahomans in the field – which is cut to 64 after two days of stroke play. The remaining 64 golfers compete in single-elimination match play, with 18-hole matches until the 36-hole championship match.
“I for sure want to make it to match play,” he said.
‘NO TRUCKS OR DINOSAURS’
Katie Mueller said that from a young age, Austen showed little interest in typical playthings for kids like dinosaurs or toy trucks.
“It was always a baseball bat or a golf club,” she said.
Mueller enjoyed baseball most growing up, but by late in middle school, golf was Austen’s sport of choice. When he quit baseball before high school to focus on golf, the tide shifted, Katie said.
“That’s when I knew that I really wanted to play a lot of golf,” Austen added.
Through family connections, Austen has access to Oak Tree National in Edmond, and now that he has his driver’s license, he makes the short drive to the course multiple times per week.
His dedication is yielding results. After dealing with an injury for part of his freshman season, in the past year, Mueller has lowered his scoring average from the high 70s to around 71, he said.
“It’s exciting. I really don’t know what else to think other than I have to keep working hard,” he said.
HISTORY OF THE JUNIOR AM
In 1948, the USGA inaugurated the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, for players under the age of 18, to determine the best junior golfer in the United States.
In 2016, the USGA made a significant change to the age limit of the U.S. Junior Amateur to allow anyone under the age of 19 to compete starting with the 2017 championship.
The inaugural U.S. Junior Amateur was played at the University of Michigan Golf Course and drew 495 entries. Dean Lind, of Rockford, Ill., defeated future U.S. Open champion Ken Venturi, of San Francisco.
Since then, a number of prominent players have won the U.S. Junior Amateur, including 14-time major champion Tiger Woods, who captured three consecutive titles from 1991-93. Jordan Spieth, the 2015 U.S. Open champion, is the only other individual to win multiple Junior Amateur titles. Other notable champions include David Duval, Gary Koch, Hunter Mahan, Johnny Miller, Mason Rudolph, Kevin Tway, the son of 1986 PGA champion Bob Tway, and Nicholas Dunlap, who in 2023 joined Woods as the only players to have won the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Junior Amateur.
In 2017 the USGA announced that the U.S. Junior champion would receive an exemption into the following year’s U.S. Open Championship and raised the age limit to 18. Noah Goodwin became the first to achieve the feat with his triumph at Flint Hills National Golf Club. The field also was expanded from 156 to 264 players for the 2021 championship at The Country Club of North Carolina.
